Another Tragedy in a country that has had too many...

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I am sitting in my house listening to the mournful sound of a lone monk chanting at the temple in the next village. It is the only sound I can hear besides the crickets and geckos. This is a village normally filled with shouts and laughter of children, dinners being cooked, families gathering for the evening to talk and eat together, khmer pop music and temple bells and drums. Tonight the village is silent save for the lone monk about 2km away.
Yesterday almost 400 people died and 500 were injured in a frenzied stampede on a bridge in Phnom Penh. The victims were mainly young women attending a concert on a small island in the river. They were there attending the final day of the water festival, a joyous occasion of boat racing down the Tonle Sap to celebrate the end of the wet season and the turning of the waters from the Tonle Sap lake into the Mekong.
Those kids were this country's future. The youth of this country are full of life, hope and optimism for the future. They are Cambodia's main hope of overcoming the terrible damage that the Khmer Rouge has done to the very fabric of this country.
This tragedy has sent Cambodians into shock.
In a village normally filled with people, music, sound, laughter it has been eerily quiet all day.
My heart goes out to these people who have endured so much.
son dti pee up som rup Cambodia.

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